Bad Car-ma
Huerfano County suffers from a severe lack of clean, classy automobiles, but don’t bother bringing your Bugatti any time soon. There’s a reason why every vehicle around these parts is dented, scratched, or dirty and has a broken windshield. And cars that sit in garages most of the year don’t count.
Everyone has to drive on dirt roads around here, at least once in a while. Even if you drive five miles an hour, someone will zoom past you going the other direction, kicking up a mini dust-bowl. If you’re really lucky, they will toss up a rock for good measure which will, invariably, spall your windshield right in your line of sight. Then when a cop stops you (which eventually he will do because your license plate light is out from another rock hit), he will tell you to replace your windshield. And you know well and good, the very DAY you replace your windshield it will get broken by another rock. That’s why so many of us drive around with a broken windshield – it’s just pointless to replace it.
When the roads are wet, mud gets tossed up under your car in nooks and crannies – this is a term from the middle ages which describes parts of a horse, which we don’t actually have on vehicles, but the name stuck. Enough mud cakes up under your car that you could build a cliff dwelling, however you can’t really see it and don’t know it’s there until it weighs down the rear end so much that your headlights are spotting for owls in the trees. This is the time to clean out your nooks and crannies.
Bees don’t actually DO things to your car. They help YOU do things to your car. If a bee gets inside your car, PLEASE pull off to the side of the road, and then chase it around with that used fast food napkin. Do NOT try to eject a bee while you are driving, or you will end up with a reflector post for a hood ornament.
Adobe bugs sometimes lay eggs inside cars. A thousand of them will hatch at an inconvenient time, like when you are driving to Denver. The itty bitty adobe bugs, which look like bright red marshmallow snack cakes, don’t really know what they are supposed to do after they hatch. They will crawl up your pant legs. They will get in your hair and crawl down over your sunglasses while you are driving. These little critters will also take a bite of a thigh once in a while to see if it’s good to eat. If they find an old popsicle wrapper on the floor in the back seat to feast on, they will grow up and start leaving excrement spots at various places in your vehicle.
Rabbits love to eat electrical wiring, maybe to fulfill their recommended daily allowance of plastic. And packrats consider electrical wiring a building material. They have a knack for turning a wiring harness into a condo in a few days. Bears break into cars if something inside smells good. Considering they regularly raid garbage cans, they are not very picky about the trash that attracts them, for instance an old popsicle wrapper. By the way, after they rip off the door to get in, they will tarry to defile the interior and make it smell more “bear-able.”
Add to all this the flat tires from spear-shaped rocks and used roofing nails, and you can see why an old pickup truck is just fine for Huerfano County.
